A RUN FOR THE MONEY When Clint Adams visits his old buddy Jack Bates in Driver's Town, Nevada, he’s shocked to learn that his friend has gone and invested in a racetrack. Unfortunately, it looks like his thoroughbred dreams are going to die before they get out of the gate. It seems a very powerful money man has already staked a claim on building a local racetrack—and when it comes to getting rid of the competition, all bets are off. Now, the Gunsmith finds himself in a race against a whole stable of galloping gunmen. But in this race, the prize for second place is a pine box—and six feet of dirt...
Over seven million Americans are either incarcerated, on probation, or on parole, with their criminal records often following them for life and affecting access to higher education, jobs, and housing. Court-ordered monetary sanctions that compel criminal defendants to pay fines, fees, surcharges, and restitution further inhibit their ability to reenter society. In A Pound of Flesh, sociologist Alexes Harris analyzes the rise of monetary sanctions in the criminal justice system and shows how they permanently penalize and marginalize the poor. She exposes the damaging effects of a little-understood component of criminal sentencing and shows how it further perpetuates racial and economic inequality. Harris draws from extensive sentencing data, legal documents, observations of court hearings, and interviews with defendants, judges, prosecutors, and other court officials. She documents how low-income defendants are affected by monetary sanctions, which include fees for public defenders and a variety of processing charges. Until these debts are paid in full, individuals remain under judicial supervision, subject to court summons, warrants, and jail stays. As a result of interest and surcharges that accumulate on unpaid financial penalties, these monetary sanctions often become insurmountable legal debts which many offenders carry for the remainder of their lives. Harris finds that such fiscal sentences, which are imposed disproportionately on low-income minorities, help create a permanent economic underclass and deepen social stratification. A Pound of Flesh delves into the court practices of five counties in Washington State to illustrate the ways in which subjective sentencing shapes the practice of monetary sanctions. Judges and court clerks hold a considerable degree of discretion in the sentencing and monitoring of monetary sanctions and rely on individual values—such as personal responsibility, meritocracy, and paternalism—to determine how much and when offenders should pay. Harris shows that monetary sanctions are imposed at different rates across jurisdictions, with little or no state government oversight. Local officials’ reliance on their own values and beliefs can also push offenders further into debt—for example, when judges charge defendants who lack the means to pay their fines with contempt of court and penalize them with additional fines or jail time. A Pound of Flesh provides a timely examination of how monetary sanctions permanently bind poor offenders to the judicial system. Harris concludes that in letting monetary sanctions go unchecked, we have created a two-tiered legal system that imposes additional burdens on already-marginalized groups.
Chris Edwards has gone from running a stall on Wakefield market to masterminding a single price shopping chain with more than 300 stores across the United Kingdom. The remarkable retail rise to fame of his Poundworld business was fascinatingly featured in 2015’s highly-rated BBC1 series, Pound Shop Wars - and while Chris opened up about his astonishing success story to the cameras, it was his eighty-eight-year-old mum Alice who truly became a cult figure. ‘I’ve always been driven by the fear of ending up skint!’ says Chris, who admits he once risked losing not only his own home, but also the houses of both his brother and business partner Laurie and of his own mum and dad on a single risky deal. Now, his frank and inspiring autobiography reveals the rise and rise of the businessman from hard-working one-man band with just a single van to high street tycoon with a fleet of huge lorries and more than 6,000 employees. And somehow along the way the sixty-five-year old Yorkshireman also built a thriving nightclub business with no fewer than nine venues. In 2015, Chris sold 75 per cent of Poundworld to American venture capitalists TPG for ?150million, but he is still in control and determined to drive Poundworld to new heights. This is the truly inspiring story of one man’s rise to the very top.
Orange Is the New Black meets Jennifer Probst’s New York Times bestselling Marriage to a Billionaire trilogy, featuring a strong-minded prison tutor who discovers that her sexy bad-boy student is far more than he appears to be. Haunted by nightmares of her father’s street murder fifteen years ago, Kat Lane decides to face her fears and uphold his legacy of helping others by teaching inmates at a New York prison. There she meets arrogant Wesley Carter, who’s as handsome as he is dangerous, as mysterious as he is quick-witted, and with a reputation that ensures people will keep their distance. As teacher and student, Kat and Carter are forced to leave their animosities at the door and learn that one should never judge a book by its cover. As Carter’s barriers begin to crumble, Kat realizes there’s much more to her angry student than she thought, leaving them to face a new, perilous obstacle: their undeniable attraction to one another. When Carter is released and Kat continues to tutor him on the outside, the obstacles mount. Can they fight the odds to make their relationship work? Will Kat’s family and friends ever accept her being with someone of his background? And will Kat’s discovery of Carter’s role on the night her father died force them apart forever...or unite them?
A young girl is torn by her desire to stay home with her family and the familiarity of their village, and her desire to go to school and discover the world beyond the mountains that surround them. Every time the girl insists that she will stay, her mother repeats that she must go--that there is more to life than labor in the coffee fields. Their loving exchange reveals the struggles and sacrifices that they will both have to make for the sake of the young girl's future. The sweet, simple text captures a mother's love and her wish for a life of opportunity for her daughter.
The gripping story of the twentieth century’s greatest struggle in the modest voice of a Canadian teenager in the RAF. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Howard Hewer dreamed of being the next Billy Bishop, of piloting Spitfires or Hurricanes over Europe. His dream was shattered when he was selected instead for a career as a wireless operator in Bomber Command. But he got all the adventure he signed on for. Hewer and his crews of 218 and 148 Squadrons flew important night operations over Germany and North Africa, dropping their deadly payloads and dodging enemy flak. And he was not always much safer on the ground. He survived the Blitz in London, a U-boat attack in the South Atlantic, a fire-fight with Italian troops near el-Alamien, as well as chaste love affairs, fistfights, and beers with Boer rebels. Self-deprecating, bittersweet, and alive to both the horrors of war and the friendships and courage of the men and women who fight it, In for a Penny, In for a Pound is the unforgettable story of a young Canadian’s experience of history’s greatest war.
First-grader Dave Clark lost the use of his legs to polio as a baby, so when his teacher announces a walking field trip to the local firehouse, Dave is worried. What if he can't keep up? Luckily, his fellow classmate Ernie Pound concocts a plan so Dave can join in the fun. Set in the 1950s in Corning, New York, A Pound of Kindness is a true story from the childhood of Dave Clark, the only professional baseball player to pitch from crutches, a "National Hero of Sports" winner, and an advocate for children with differing abilities.
Ezra Pound transformed his style of poetry when he wrote The Adams Cantos in the 1920s. But what caused him to rethink his earlier writing techniques? Grounded in archival material, this study explores the extent to which Pound's poetry changed in response to his reading of 17th-century American History and the social climate of the pre-war period. Drawing on the Ezra Pound papers, David Ten Eyck documents the changes to Pound's documentary techniques, establishing a chronology of the composition of The Cantos. His close readings of specific passages, set against the interwar years, allow Ten Eyck to gain insights into Pound's 1930s political and social criticism. Through references to the annotated copy of The Works of John Adams, he explores Pound's engagement with Adams at the expense of Thomas Jefferson: a figure formally at the heart of his previous work. Ultimately, this contextual and archival study uses John Adams and America to unlock the fascist beliefs and the later poetry of Ezra Pound.
